Glaucoma

What Is It?

Glaucoma is a serious, lifelong eye disease that can lead to vision loss if not controlled. But for most people, glaucoma does not have to lead to blindness. That is because glaucoma is controllable with modern treatment, and there are many choices to help keep glaucoma from further damaging your eyes. Treatment cannot reverse damage that has already occurred, but it can prevent further vision loss. Glaucoma is an eye disease that causes loss of sight by damaging a part of the eye called the optic nerve. This nerve sends information from your eyes to your brain. When glaucoma damages your optic nerve, you begin to lose patches of vision, usually side vision (peripheral vision).

Types of Glaucoma

There are many types of glaucoma. Often, the cause of high pressure in the eye can help tell the type of glaucoma and the best treatment for it.

Are You at Risk?

How Do Eye Doctors Check for Glaucoma?

There are three major signs that a person may have glaucoma: optic nerve damage, vision loss (visual field loss) and increased eye pressure (elevated intraocular pressure). Your eye doctor has a number of tests to check for these signs.